In canon it’s also clear that the story is from one side’s point of view and is based heavily on Bilbo’s and Frodo’s own record of things. I have no doubt you could find numerous historical cases where exactly the same demonisation takes place. And, underneath, the ‘good guys’ can be pretty brutal too.
Having read the Penelopiad (events around the Iliad and Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view) and other takes on classic stories, I’d have nothing against this on principle.
This. Assume that Lord of the Rings is a historical document of a real world you found. How seriously would you take any given one of the “facts” it describes?
Assume that Lord of the Rings is a historical document of a real world you found. How seriously would you take any given one of the “facts” it describes?
Have you taken 5 minutes to consider the issue, or are you just asking rhetorically?
Here’s my answer. Lord of the Rings as a historical document describes some events you may consider dubious, but it is also a moral document that espouses certain specific values. Some of these values are:
mercy towards enemies (atleast against all enemies whose species have shown even a slight capacity for peaceful coexistence), both individuals (Saruman, Grima, Gollum) and collectively (the Dunlendings)
friendship and peaceful cooperation between cultures (e.g. dwarves and elves and hobbits and Men)
appreciation of beauty in diverse forms (nature, poetry, technical achievements)
non-intrusion in the lands of weaker peoples (at the end of the story it is made illegal for Men to enter the land of the Druedain without their permission, and something similar is mentioned for the Shire in the appendices).
rejection of human sacrifice and self-immolation in pride, but acceptance of death as part of a natural order.
war only as a grievous necessity: (the appreciation of warriors as higher in value than e.g. artists is described by characters as a sad phenomenon of their times.)
a love for humility, and a fear of power (or the concentration of power) - the rejection of the Ring.
So here’s my evaluation of Lord of the Rings as a historical document: If it was created as an instrument of propaganda, it was created by a mostly pacifistic and both morally and artistically advanced (if slightly technophobic, and a bit fatalistic) people, that would have no motivation nor desire to invade other realms that did them no harm, nor would it have a necessity to discover villains where none existed.
Yep. Written by Bilbo and Frodo, who probably were pacifist etc. and as they were clearly tools of the Elves and the ‘Wise’ would think that they were lovely too.
Not to mention the idea of a species not having a capacity for co-existence is one we’d find suspicious in historical parallels. And don’t forget totalitarianism and racial hierachies amongst humans.
Yep. Written by Bilbo and Frodo, who probably were pacifist etc. and as they were clearly tools of the Elves and the ‘Wise’ would think that they were lovely too.
You’re arguing backwards from your preconceived conclusion, not forwards from the evidence.
Not to mention the idea of a species not having a capacity for co-existence is one we’d find suspicious in historical parallels.
That you find it suspicious is part of your map, not of the territory under discussion.
And don’t forget totalitarianism and racial hierachies amongst humans.
Totalitarianism? If you mean Aragorn’s kingship, his monarchy seems far from a totalitarian regime.
And I never argued the culture that created it was an anti-racist one. If you want to argue that the in-universe culture that created LOTR was a racist one, you’d certainly find much greater evidence for that than you’d find for it being a propagandist’s tool against a supposedly peaceful and freedom-loving Mordor.
In fact Tolkien himself (outside the text) mentioned one such point: the idea that the Rohirrim were genetically connected to the Dunedain from way back was spoken by Faramir, but was “in reality” a piece of propaganda—meant to assuage Dunedain racial pride for having given away such a large portion of their former lands. In “reality” the true racially-related-to-Gondor people were the “bad” Dunlendings, which had allied themselves with Saruman.
And you could imagine points where the Elves are e.g. portrayed better than they were, because the Queen was elvish, and so the King and his heirs needed a propaganda tool to make his people think better of elves.
The book is from a hobbits-eye-view. That’s quite explicit. I’m not sure why bringing it up would be pushing for a preconceived conclusion, and I think it’s more helpful than treating a text as the product of an undefined ‘people’, given it refers to events involving many different races and nations who are portrayed as significantly different from each other.
But to take back to the context of this, for a fanfic what’s important is plausibility, and so rationalisation of a kind is actually fine: the point is whether you can tell a consistent story wherein Lord of the Rings is propaganda and this other account more accurate.
I’m not sure about your point on species. We don’t know what Middle Earth is like, so we can only understand it by using our maps, albeit with less certainty and more care, surely?
You described LOTR as morally advanced, and for me that’s got a severe tension with racism.
The book is from a hobbits-eye-view. That’s quite explicit.
Yes, it’s just that you used this fact selectively in order to dismiss the evidence of their testimony (by essentially claiming they didn’t have the “right” perspective), you didn’t try to see all it was evidence for. That’s a failure of rationality.
If it’s written by Hobbits, then they have a better perspective on how the stronger peoples described in the book (Elves, Gondor etc) treat other weaker peoples.
And if it’s not written by Hobbits, but by Gondorians pretending to be hobbits, then that’s evidence in favour of Gondorians sharing the moral values espoused by the book.
I’m not sure about your point on species.
I’m saying that if we’re talking species, perhaps the first map you consider should be with species (e.g. how we treat sharks, or how we discuss baby-eaters and super-happies) instead of races.
You described LOTR as morally advanced, and for me that’s got a severe tension with racism.
Racism has two parts, the descriptive parts (such and such people are cognitively inferior or superior, or biologically predisposed to such-and-such behaviour) and the normative parts (you shouldn’t mingle with such-and-such-peoples, you should use them to your advantage instead).
If we’re discussing the in-universe culture that wrote LOTR, it seems to have parts of the former, but not the latter. The latter is the immoral aspect of racism, the former is merely about lack of knowledge. E.g. it may claim that Frodo’s adventurous side may have come from his Fallohide heritage, but it’s not as if Frodo or the book ever argues in favour of oppressing non-Fallohides.
Or e..g Gondor for example had a civil war regarding a racial issue, described in the appendices—one side didn’t want a mixed-race king, the other side accepted him. The good side (according to the text) was the side that did accept the mixed-race king—and yet the text doesn’t necessarily argue that character is NOT found on the genes. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps the Northerners were genetically inferior in some ways compared to the Dunedain—it just doesn’t have anything to do with it being okay to disqualify someone for kingship because of it.
I didn’t use to dismiss their testimony, I used it to object to you characterising the ‘people’ of the LOTR as if that meant the main characters who prosecute the war with Mordor. The writers of the LOTR are intended to be the Hobbits, who are explicitly peaceful etc. and who again explicitly don’t really understand the councils of the Wise etc. but are drafted in very late in the day. As for understanding how weaker people are treated, the evidence in the book shows that the hobbits were ignored early on, drafted in for a couple of incredibly dangerous missions by people more powerful than them, and then the society was left to the attacks of Saruman while two of its members were taking horrendous dangers. Of course they’re told that they’ve been being defended all along by Strider and co, but all they really know is that nothing has happened to them.
My map is for how we treat persons. The species in LOTR map to persons better than to non-persons.
While oppression isn’t explicitly condoned, there’s quite a lot of cases of ‘swarthy’ people, ‘Easterners’ etc. being bad. I don’t think you can say that imposing negative stereotypes that certain races are untrustworthy etc. isn’t part of the immoral part of racism. I agree there’s less of your latter sort, but doesn’t Gandalf talk about how the Numenorians have diminished themselves by mingling with lesser men?
While it’s true that Tolkien did set out to create a fictional world, I think that treating LotR like a historical documentfrom that fictional world is counter to both Tolkien’s intent, and the spirit of the work. Tolkien did not write LotR to describe “facts” from some world; rather, he set out to create a mythology for that world. Thus, when you read any ot Tolkien’s works, don’t think of them as literal descriptions of things that actually occured in some fictional world where elves and wizards exist. Rather, understand it like you would a folk tale or mythic poem: of great cultural significance to the people that it came from, but not a literal account of something that happened.
In canon it’s also clear that the story is from one side’s point of view and is based heavily on Bilbo’s and Frodo’s own record of things. I have no doubt you could find numerous historical cases where exactly the same demonisation takes place. And, underneath, the ‘good guys’ can be pretty brutal too.
Having read the Penelopiad (events around the Iliad and Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view) and other takes on classic stories, I’d have nothing against this on principle.
This. Assume that Lord of the Rings is a historical document of a real world you found. How seriously would you take any given one of the “facts” it describes?
Have you taken 5 minutes to consider the issue, or are you just asking rhetorically?
Here’s my answer. Lord of the Rings as a historical document describes some events you may consider dubious, but it is also a moral document that espouses certain specific values. Some of these values are:
mercy towards enemies (atleast against all enemies whose species have shown even a slight capacity for peaceful coexistence), both individuals (Saruman, Grima, Gollum) and collectively (the Dunlendings)
friendship and peaceful cooperation between cultures (e.g. dwarves and elves and hobbits and Men)
appreciation of beauty in diverse forms (nature, poetry, technical achievements)
non-intrusion in the lands of weaker peoples (at the end of the story it is made illegal for Men to enter the land of the Druedain without their permission, and something similar is mentioned for the Shire in the appendices).
rejection of human sacrifice and self-immolation in pride, but acceptance of death as part of a natural order.
war only as a grievous necessity: (the appreciation of warriors as higher in value than e.g. artists is described by characters as a sad phenomenon of their times.)
a love for humility, and a fear of power (or the concentration of power) - the rejection of the Ring.
So here’s my evaluation of Lord of the Rings as a historical document: If it was created as an instrument of propaganda, it was created by a mostly pacifistic and both morally and artistically advanced (if slightly technophobic, and a bit fatalistic) people, that would have no motivation nor desire to invade other realms that did them no harm, nor would it have a necessity to discover villains where none existed.
Yep. Written by Bilbo and Frodo, who probably were pacifist etc. and as they were clearly tools of the Elves and the ‘Wise’ would think that they were lovely too.
Not to mention the idea of a species not having a capacity for co-existence is one we’d find suspicious in historical parallels. And don’t forget totalitarianism and racial hierachies amongst humans.
You’re arguing backwards from your preconceived conclusion, not forwards from the evidence.
That you find it suspicious is part of your map, not of the territory under discussion.
Totalitarianism? If you mean Aragorn’s kingship, his monarchy seems far from a totalitarian regime.
And I never argued the culture that created it was an anti-racist one. If you want to argue that the in-universe culture that created LOTR was a racist one, you’d certainly find much greater evidence for that than you’d find for it being a propagandist’s tool against a supposedly peaceful and freedom-loving Mordor.
In fact Tolkien himself (outside the text) mentioned one such point: the idea that the Rohirrim were genetically connected to the Dunedain from way back was spoken by Faramir, but was “in reality” a piece of propaganda—meant to assuage Dunedain racial pride for having given away such a large portion of their former lands. In “reality” the true racially-related-to-Gondor people were the “bad” Dunlendings, which had allied themselves with Saruman.
And you could imagine points where the Elves are e.g. portrayed better than they were, because the Queen was elvish, and so the King and his heirs needed a propaganda tool to make his people think better of elves.
The book is from a hobbits-eye-view. That’s quite explicit. I’m not sure why bringing it up would be pushing for a preconceived conclusion, and I think it’s more helpful than treating a text as the product of an undefined ‘people’, given it refers to events involving many different races and nations who are portrayed as significantly different from each other.
But to take back to the context of this, for a fanfic what’s important is plausibility, and so rationalisation of a kind is actually fine: the point is whether you can tell a consistent story wherein Lord of the Rings is propaganda and this other account more accurate.
I’m not sure about your point on species. We don’t know what Middle Earth is like, so we can only understand it by using our maps, albeit with less certainty and more care, surely?
You described LOTR as morally advanced, and for me that’s got a severe tension with racism.
Yes, it’s just that you used this fact selectively in order to dismiss the evidence of their testimony (by essentially claiming they didn’t have the “right” perspective), you didn’t try to see all it was evidence for. That’s a failure of rationality.
If it’s written by Hobbits, then they have a better perspective on how the stronger peoples described in the book (Elves, Gondor etc) treat other weaker peoples.
And if it’s not written by Hobbits, but by Gondorians pretending to be hobbits, then that’s evidence in favour of Gondorians sharing the moral values espoused by the book.
I’m saying that if we’re talking species, perhaps the first map you consider should be with species (e.g. how we treat sharks, or how we discuss baby-eaters and super-happies) instead of races.
Racism has two parts, the descriptive parts (such and such people are cognitively inferior or superior, or biologically predisposed to such-and-such behaviour) and the normative parts (you shouldn’t mingle with such-and-such-peoples, you should use them to your advantage instead).
If we’re discussing the in-universe culture that wrote LOTR, it seems to have parts of the former, but not the latter. The latter is the immoral aspect of racism, the former is merely about lack of knowledge. E.g. it may claim that Frodo’s adventurous side may have come from his Fallohide heritage, but it’s not as if Frodo or the book ever argues in favour of oppressing non-Fallohides.
Or e..g Gondor for example had a civil war regarding a racial issue, described in the appendices—one side didn’t want a mixed-race king, the other side accepted him. The good side (according to the text) was the side that did accept the mixed-race king—and yet the text doesn’t necessarily argue that character is NOT found on the genes. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps the Northerners were genetically inferior in some ways compared to the Dunedain—it just doesn’t have anything to do with it being okay to disqualify someone for kingship because of it.
I didn’t use to dismiss their testimony, I used it to object to you characterising the ‘people’ of the LOTR as if that meant the main characters who prosecute the war with Mordor. The writers of the LOTR are intended to be the Hobbits, who are explicitly peaceful etc. and who again explicitly don’t really understand the councils of the Wise etc. but are drafted in very late in the day. As for understanding how weaker people are treated, the evidence in the book shows that the hobbits were ignored early on, drafted in for a couple of incredibly dangerous missions by people more powerful than them, and then the society was left to the attacks of Saruman while two of its members were taking horrendous dangers. Of course they’re told that they’ve been being defended all along by Strider and co, but all they really know is that nothing has happened to them.
My map is for how we treat persons. The species in LOTR map to persons better than to non-persons.
While oppression isn’t explicitly condoned, there’s quite a lot of cases of ‘swarthy’ people, ‘Easterners’ etc. being bad. I don’t think you can say that imposing negative stereotypes that certain races are untrustworthy etc. isn’t part of the immoral part of racism. I agree there’s less of your latter sort, but doesn’t Gandalf talk about how the Numenorians have diminished themselves by mingling with lesser men?
While it’s true that Tolkien did set out to create a fictional world, I think that treating LotR like a historical documentfrom that fictional world is counter to both Tolkien’s intent, and the spirit of the work. Tolkien did not write LotR to describe “facts” from some world; rather, he set out to create a mythology for that world. Thus, when you read any ot Tolkien’s works, don’t think of them as literal descriptions of things that actually occured in some fictional world where elves and wizards exist. Rather, understand it like you would a folk tale or mythic poem: of great cultural significance to the people that it came from, but not a literal account of something that happened.
This is actually sort of my point.